


You Would Share Him

by thebabytiger



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angelica POV, F/M, This could have been a threesome story, and honestly still might be, but it's been sitting and I haven't known how to finish it, so I thought I'd leave it untainted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 03:50:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16468139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebabytiger/pseuds/thebabytiger
Summary: "I'm just saying, if you really loved me you would share him."On the surface, the words seem lighthearted and while perhaps a little ribald, nothing too terribly off color. Only Eliza, who had whispered her claim that night as you both spotted him from across the room, has any inkling that something might be, might have always been, terribly amiss.





	You Would Share Him

The letters have been coming for weeks now, a new one every night or so, and every time a new one comes in your stomach sinks closer and closer to something resembling nausea. You can't help but wonder if this is what life is always going to feel like for you, and that thought isn't at all encouraging. 

The first had arrived only a few days after that winters Ball, and for a very brief moment all three Schuyler sisters practically vibrate with excitement as the sender is announced. Peggy's excitement subsides relatively quickly; she had not been involved in any of her older sisters' conversations at that particular ball and has only heard the highlights in the days and nights since. While detailed enough to make for some excitement, she has none of the unadulterated anticipation (nor any reason to) that the letter's arrival brings out in her two older sisters. It is not at all strange, then, for Peggy's interest in the scene unfolding in the drawing room, as your father inspects the letter before holding it out to the intended recipient, to drift away as if nothing more than a passing fancy.

All you can hope, though, is that Eliza's reaction will mask how quickly your own interest and excitement plummeted. Peggy's may have coasted away, a leaf on the water, but yours feels like a stone that sinks to the bottom of your stomach and temporarily threatens to pull you down with it. You make the right noises, oohing and ahhing in all the right places, as Eliza reads through the letter, your feigned disinterest (borne more from the illness the weight in the pit of her stomach seems to have induced) somehow matches almost perfectly with Peggy's slightly more legitimate distance from the situation as a whole. Your father is a very powerful, and very rich man after all, and suitors are not especially hard to come by for the three of them. Eliza, too wrapped up in the thrill of her own happiness, doesn't seem to notice as she rushes through the letter, tongue tripping over itself in her excitement, and then rushes from the room to compose a response. When she leaves, you feel as though you can finally breathe again, but you somehow know the air will never taste the same again.

You try and pay as little mind as possible to the outgoing letters, to the fact that there even are outgoing letters, but as the back and forth correspondence grows more and more frequent, you find that you can hardly manage to get it out of your head. The letters arrive nightly now, each one better than the last, more intimate, and as you read each one (for you can hardly help but read them all over Eliza's shoulder in what quickly becomes an enthusiastic Schuyler sister ritual) you can't help but wish in vain that you could have replayed the entire night of that ball all over again. It likely would have changed nothing, as the facts are irrefutably the same no matter how you look at it, and with only a moment to have made a decision you can't find that you begrudge your sister her chance at happiness. It doesn't stop the longing.

Perhaps Alexander was right, after all: you will never be satisfied. You are the eldest daughter, and as such your lot in life is different from that of your younger sisters, each one of them more carefree than the next in a never-ending loop of simple contentment that you have tried for years to feel. It never comes, and with Alexander's words ringing like prophecy in your ears even weeks after they were uttered, you feel as though it never will.

Which is how you find yourself uttering perhaps the worst suggestion you can possibly offer to your sister several weeks later. The letters, the ritual of reading them (of wishing it were Eliza reading over your shoulder), catches you up into its' giddy whirl and you find yourself lulled into a false sense of security somehow, despite the ever-present voice in your head reminding you that the letters are not for you, that this suitor (the only one out of all the ones that have come to the house for any of the three Schuyler daughters to have truly caught your interest) is not for you, that this happiness is not yours. It's about the worst thing you could possibly forget.

"I'm just saying, if you really love me you would share him," you tease without thinking one night, cutting Eliza short as she goes on and on about the latest letter. The conversation had been on the verge of expanding, as it always does, to your happiness and your prospects. Eliza, simple as she is (not stupid, never stupid, but simple and easily pleased), has no concept of how very bleak your prospects do seem, how dim the future seems to grow as each new letter comes through the front door, and so you work without thinking to divert her into something lighter. Your prospects, of anyone's, are the most important, and it does scald more than a little to be so outshone by your own little sister. You are supposed to be the first married, and it doesn't seem at all fair that Eliza, without trying, can seemingly obtain for herself not only a match, but love in the process, and all before you. At least, you suppose, it wasn't Peggy who overtook you both.

Eliza's eyes widen, and silence falls across the room for a brief moment. Peggy looks at you curiously, knowing and sensing that something is off without any particular idea of what it might be. On the surface, the words seem lighthearted and while perhaps a little ribald, nothing too terribly off color. Only Eliza, who had whispered her claim that night as you both spotted him from across the room, has any inkling that something might be, might have always been, terribly amiss. You can see the awareness bloom across her face as she replays the night through her own eyes, her own shifting awareness (and may it do as much good to her as it has done to you these last few weeks), and your panic grows.

A moment later, that same awareness is gone, with a simple, "Ha!" that seems to satisfy Peggy at the very least. Encouraging the comment as a joke leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, but you do it anyway, laughing along with both of your younger sisters and hoping that the moment will pass without leaving any further imprint on either sister's awareness. Peggy, you know, isn't likely to remember, or perhaps isn't likely to care to remember about this moment. But you're painfully aware, perhaps now in this moment more than ever, how much Eliza's seeming naivete and simplistic outlook on life can trick you into forgetting how utterly shrewd your sister is. You can only hope that this is not one of those times.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I couldn't figure out how to continue this even though I want to. I can see this either being some sad unrequited love thing or some raunchy threesome thing (and let's be real, Alexander would be so down for that) and I am in for either option but just could not figure out how to move the story forward so this is going up like this and maybe someday I'll remember how to finish a story and give us all the Schuylercest we all want.


End file.
